Shorts Block: "Drawing Lines"
85 Minutes
Living on the Edge of the Internet | Yokaitopia | Cabbage Daddy | reTIRED | Broken Mosaic | The Bird, the Girl and the Typhoon | Our Pockets Are Full | Trading Cards | Paper Daughter
Living on the Edge of the Internet
Directed by Clarissa Chua
14 mins | English | New England Premiere
It’s the early 2000s, the internet is new and janky and a 7 year old girl struggles to get access to an online game.
A period piece about loneliness, the physicality of the early internet and our relationship with technology.
Yokaitopia
Directed by Glenna Burner
8 mins | English | Boston Premiere
Yokaitopia tells the story of a boy who unexpectedly crosses over into the supernatural world of Yokai — mysterious Japanese spirits that inhabit all people, objects and places.
Cabbage Daddy
Directed by Grace An
4 mins | Korean with English Subtitles | Boston Premiere
Why am I so bad at Korean?
Advisory: Some mature content
reTIRED
Directed by mari jaye blanchard
9 mins | No Dialogue | Boston Premiere
In the near future, elderly Millennials maintain a flooded town’s Trash Wall, until one woman sees what’s on the horizon.
Advisory: 16+ Some nudity
Broken Mosaic
Directed by Alexandra “Lexie” Orr
4 mins | English, Tagalog | Boston Premiere
In this punk music video, two mixed Asian-American siblings are always the topic of gossip, but they decide who they are.
Advisory: Flashing lights
The Bird, the Girl and the Typhoon
Directed by Angeline Marie Michael Meitzler
10 mins | English, Tagalog | New England Premiere
An elder, migrant Filipino nurse, following the same routine for 40 years, wakes up in her now-grown daughter’s old bedroom. She remembers a farmer from her childhood who once told her that the end of the typhoon season and the arrival of the harvest will begin with the sight of a red-colored bird.
In a subversion of colonial messages which signal that safety, security and prosperity are given in proximity to imperial empires, she transforms throughout the morning into the weather, the bird, the harvest and her own internal force.
Our Pockets Are Full
Directed by Anjali Pulim
5 mins | English | Boston Premiere
Three generations of women travel through the memories and stories behind seemingly mundane objects.
Trading Cards
Directed by Radheya Jang
15 mins | English | New England Premiere
A personal archaeology played out in an animated universe that combines fairytale logic with the nostalgia of trading cards…over its 15 minutes the film sinks in and spreads out through the groundwater, the soundtrack’s rich, seeping ambience an underlay for the unsettling dream logic of its imagery, which is more organic and intrepid than surrealism – and more captivating.” – Shots.net
The past, present and future collide when a mysterious man confronts his younger self over a game of trading cards. An exploration of identity, nostalgia and the erosion of childhood innocence, Trading Cards is a dark fantasy animated film about the weight of living with Obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Advisory: Mental health discussions
Paper Daughter
Directed by Cami Kwan
15 mins | English | Boston
Joy, an immigrant from China, enters the U.S. under a false identity as a “Paper Daughter,” memorizing details of a deceased girl named Mae and creating a paper mask in her likeness. Arriving at Angel Island, she faces detention and interrogation, discovering carved poems that echo the struggles of immigrants before her. During questioning, her mask begins to unravel until Mae’s ghost appears, guiding her to answer and helping her pass. With her papers approved, Joy leaves for San Francisco, where Mae’s spirit fades into the wind, urging her to live for them both. Joy steps forward into freedom, carrying Mae’s memory with her